


Returning to the Garden

by AnnaTheHank



Series: A/C/G ot3 [25]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Anniversary, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Eden - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Raphael is a rebel, and also my new son, gabriel is having feelings again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22285930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaTheHank/pseuds/AnnaTheHank
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley go away together for their anniversary.Gabriel has feelings about this but who should he talk to?Perhaps a fellow archangel that hasn't been around much?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley/Gabriel (Good Omens), Gabriel & Raphael (Good Omens)
Series: A/C/G ot3 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1424962
Comments: 14
Kudos: 71





	Returning to the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Guys do you ever wake up one day and think about how you can put Raphael into a fic and then suddenly he's your new favorite character even tho he's not actually in the source material?  
> Cause that's essentially what happened here.   
> Thank you all for reading <3 I love you all with all my heart <3

Gabriel had to turn down the picture frame, pushing the smiling faces of himself, Crowley, and Aziraphale toward the desk. He couldn’t look at it. Not when he knew he wouldn’t see them for a whole week. 

It’s not like that hadn’t happened before. They’ve gone plenty of times longer than that without seeing each other. But this was different. Because they had asked him not to come, specifically. They were going somewhere together for a week. And had told him to only seek them out if there was an emergency.

After which Crowley told him to not have any emergencies. 

And Gabriel didn’t have an emergency. Except that he missed them. And his missing of them was only accentuated by the fact that he _couldn’t_ go down to see them. He even had the time. He wished he was busy, instead. So he wasn’t just sitting there, thinking about them. And how he couldn’t go see them.

Gabriel growled and pushed away from his desk. He needed to go for a walk, stretch his legs, do something. If he kept thinking about them he’d do something stupid. Something he knew he could do but that he also knew that he shouldn't do. 

Because they would be mad if he did.

But even several laps of heaven couldn’t make him stop thinking about it. So he sat back at his desk, hands folded tightly around each other. He closed his eyes and told himself he shouldn’t.

Then he did.

Gabriel searched Earth and found Crowley and Aziraphale in a little hotel in Paris. He was fairly certain he was undetectable to them. Even if he wasn’t taking measures to veil himself, they probably wouldn’t notice him. 

They were curled up in bed together, arms wrapped around each other. Awake, but unmoving, just laying around each other. Peaceful. 

Gabriel swallowed whatever lump formed in his throat. He hadn’t meant to intrude. They were just spending some time together. There was nothing wrong with that. He should leave them alone.

“Can you believe it?” Aziraphale asked, his voice light and airy, drawing Gabriel back to the scene. “A whole year?”

Crowley’s eyes remained closed but he smile. “Yeah. Kind of hard to believe, huh?”

It _had_ been a year. A year since the world did not end. A year since, he figured, the two of them had gotten together. An anniversary. Humans celebrated them. Gabriel felt a bit of relaxation at that thought. They weren’t trying to avoid him, they were just celebrating a year together.

And in a few months, Gabriel figured, they’d be celebrating one with him, too.

Crowley leaned down and whispered something in Aziraphale’s ear. Aziraphale looked up at him, then looked over his shoulder, staring at Gabriel. He dropped his view in the blink of an eye, hoping he hadn’t been caught. 

After the heat rush of almost being known had passed, Gabriel still felt weird. He was happy to know the week away had nothing to do with him. But there was still something wrong. And he ached to figure out what it was. 

But the people he would talk to about that were away for the week. And he worried about how the talk would go. Would he upset them more? Cause another concern they didn’t need?

Who else could he talk to? Michael had been more agreeable since the incident, but they weren't exactly friendly. Uriel and Sandalphon still weren’t talking to him after the incident. And other angels were out of the question. Gabriel couldn’t be seen having relationship problems. 

He probably shouldn’t be seen having a relationship at all, but it was a little late for that.

There was, of course, another person he could talk to. Only Gabriel hadn’t seen this person in a few...thousand years. And the last time they spoke, they had really yelled. Well. Gabriel had yelled. 

But in the storm of his current thoughts, that person still seemed like the best option.

-

Raphael had gone back to Eden. About a thousand years after it fell. “Oh, someone ought to go check on it,” he had said. “I’ll be right back.” And then he wasn’t.

Raphael had stayed in Eden. And no one had managed to convince him to come back. After all, _someone_ had to take care of it. 

Eden had been enough trouble for the humans. Adam hadn’t been able to handle it all, so God made Eve to help. And even though Raphael was an angel, he seemed to insist on doing things the human way in the garden. 

Gabriel stood at the top of the wall and studied the surrounding greenery. A corner off to the left was overgrown, and he figured that’s where he would find him. And find him he did.

Raphael had his sleeves rolled up, sweat pouring over his skin as he knelt on the ground and pulled out weeds. He was tall. The years in the garden had made him thin but muscular. His hair had grown out too. It was long, streaks of black and white, and he had tied it back with a small, green ribbon. His eyes were sunken, and sullen. His skin was stretched tight, and a fine example of sun-radiance. [In other words, he was hot].

Gabriel cleared his throat, and Raphael turned to him, not the least bit surprised that he was there. 

“Gabriel,” Raphael greeted. He wiped his hands together and placed them on his thighs, taking a deep breath.

“Hello, Raphael,” Gabriel greeted back. He gulped, unsure how to proceed. He had come here on a whim, and now he was regretting it. “How are you?”

Raphael furrowed his eyebrows together. “...Fine.”

Gabriel nodded. He cleared his throat and looked away, at anything other than the green eyes before him. He scratched his neck to make it seem like he wasn’t just avoiding eye-contact. “I was hoping we could talk.”

Raphael sighed and turned back to his task. “If this is about the apocalypse,” he said, wrapping a weed around his hand, “I’ll tell you what I told the others.” He pulled back, the weed ripping free of the soil. “Get over it.”

“It’s not about-wait. Others?”

Raphael pulled another weed out, this one tugging back a bit. He finally got it out, tossing it on a pile to the side. “You aren’t the first to come here,” he explained. He sat back on his feet. “Lots of them. Uriel even.”

“Uriel,” Gabriel mumbled. She and Raphael had always gotten along in the past, he figured that made sense. 

“So if you need advice go talk to them,” Raphael said. He got back up on his knees, ready to get back to work. “I’m done having this conversation.”

“It’s not about that,” Gabriel assured him. Raphael stopped moving, looking at Gabriel over his shoulder. “I am over that.”

Raphael blinked, a slow, languid process. “So why are you here?”

Gabriel shuffled his feet a bit. He knew what Raphael was thinking. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly five thousand years. And Gabriel was certainly not the angel Raphael had last encountered. Not anymore. 

“I have a problem,” Gabriel said. “An emotion,” he clarified. “And I can’t figure it out.”

Raphael sighed and got to his feet, dusting himself off. “Come along then.”

Gabriel followed Raphael through the dense forests of Eden until they came to a clearing. One that hadn’t been there before. The Tree of Knowledge was gone. In it’s place, a little wooden cabin. Raphael led Gabriel inside. It was warm, and nicely decorated with a small bed, a small table, and a little kitchen in the corner. 

Raphael crossed to the kitchen, pulling out a kettle and asking, “Tea?”

“Please,” Gabriel said. 

Raphael nodded to the table and Gabriel took a seat, trying very hard not to think about the fact that he was sitting inside the very reason everything had gone to shit in the first place. 

Raphael poured some water into the kettle and set it on a burner. “So, tell me your woes.”

“I’m dating someone,” Gabriel said, carefully, watching Raphael’s face for any hint of reaction. “An angel.” This was not a lie.

Raphael nodded, gesturing for him to go on.

“But they’re dating someone else,” Gabriel said, still not lying. Just omitting truths. “And I don’t mind,” because he was also dating that someone else. “But I saw them together and it was weird. I feel weird.”

“Jealous,” Raphael offered. 

“No,” Gabriel said. It didn’t feel like jealousy.

Raphael leaned against the counter and studied Gabriel. “Who is the angel you’re dating?”

Gabriel stalled. There was the possibility that Raphael didn’t know that Aziraphale had ruined everything and been the cause of the destruction of the Great Plan. But if the others had been here to talk to him about it, he probably did. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. 

Raphael shook his head and turned to the whistling kettle. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the whole truth.” He poured out two cups and set them down on the table, taking a seat across from Gabriel. “And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want my full help. So,” he gestured to Gabriel with one hand, dipping a tea bag in his cup with the other, “Talk.”

“The _whole_ truth?” Gabriel asked, his own mug and bag left untouched.

Raphael nodded. So Gabriel told him everything.

He started with heaven, with Crowley as an angel, with loving him, despite not knowing that was what he was doing. With the sheer amount of pain that came from losing him and the others. He talked about Aziraphale, how he had been a good angel, properly, in all the ways that Gabriel couldn’t fathom. How he had come to love him over the years of working together, how he had recognized, then, what that feeling was, but had chosen to ignore it. 

He did not talk about the apocalypse that wasn’t, but he talked about that moment, a few weeks or so later when he had gone to Aziraphale, curious over what was so special about Earth and the humans. He talked about how he and Crowley showed him everything. How Aziraphale and Crowley were in a relationship now. How, a few weeks after that, he had started a relationship with them. (Gabriel did not go into the details of how that all started). 

Gabriel took a moment to build himself up to what all came next, explaining to Raphael that he was never jealous of Aziraphale and Crowley being together because that was natural, and this wasn’t the feeling he was having over what he saw. (He had still not explained what he saw yet). 

Then Gabriel went into everything else that followed. The carnival, the whole deal with Michael and Hastur working together, Aziraphale and Crowley being kidnapped, about everyone conspiring against him, using him as a means to get to Aziraphale and Crowley, about the demons invading Heaven and Aziraphale nursing him back to health. He told Raphael about getting married (this was the only story that Raphael seemed to have a physical reaction to-just a slight rise of the eyebrows), and the subsequent act of almost losing Crowley physically and then Aziraphale emotionally. He even detailed how he had wrongfully assumed he could leave them to make things better but how that had made everything worse. 

When he was done, Raphael had gone through three cups of tea. 

Raphael set cup number four down on the table and sat back in his chair, taking it all in as Gabriel breathed. There was a rush of relief that came from just saying it all. And now all that remained was waiting in agony as Raphael sat in silence.

And fear crept into that moment. For Raphael had once been the single closest angel to God. And what if he still was? What if he would not approve of any of this, of Gabriel dating a demon, or another angel for that matter? What if Gabriel stopping the second Antichrist was the act that was truly going to push him over the edge, and by admitting it to Raphael he had signed his own death warrant?

“So why did you come here?” Raphael asked again. “You seem to already know how you feel about all of that.”

Gabriel blinked. Oh yes, he had forgotten to mention. “They’re gone together on an anniversary trip. And it feels weird.”

Raphael’s face opened a bit, and then he laughed. Gabriel frowned, but at least laughing was better than instant smiting. 

“I could have come up with a million reasons why you would be here,” Raphael said, after he had calmed down a bit. “But that is certainly not one of them.”

And Gabriel felt the true weight of his mistake crush him. He had come here in a fit of passion, because he wanted to talk to someone. And how inconsequential were his feelings about Aziraphale and Crowley in comparison to the last time they had spoken. Rather, the last time Gabriel had yelled and Raphael had forced him away.

Raphael laughed again, as if Gabriel’s admittance of the truth was the funniest thing he’s ever heard. It probably was. 

“I shouldn’t have bothered you,” Gabriel said. “I’ll leave.”

He stood but Raphael shook his head, still chuckling. “No no,” he said, waving his hand back at the seat. “Sit down, sit down.” Gabriel followed his instructions. “That is just a lot to take in.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “Things tend to happen when you disappear for five millennium.”

“Well, yeah,” Raphael said, not at all offended by the passive anger in Gabriel’s voice. “But that was all what, a year?”

“Not even,” Gabriel mumbled. 

“Listen,” Raphael said. He leaned forward, hands spread out on the table, eyes wide. He was also not the same angel that Gabriel remembered. “You are jealous.”

“I told you I wasn’t. I don’t care if they’re together.”

“No, no, no.” Raphael dismissed him with a hand wave. “You’re jealous. Just not in the way you know.”

“Explain.”

“How much time do you spend with them?”

“We try to meet up once a week if we can,” Gabriel said. “But that’s been recent.”

“And how often do you see them separately? Alone? One without the other?”

Gabriel sat back and thought about it. There were some times here and there where he did, such as if Aziraphale was looking at books or Crowley was off sleeping. “Not often,” he admitted. Mainly because he didn’t get a lot of time. And he didn’t want to miss out on time with either of them.

Raphael nodded and opened his arms, as if saying, ‘there’s your problem’. But Gabriel did not see his problem. He shook his head.

“You said you loved Crowley before, yes?” Raphael asked. Gabriel nodded. “And you loved Aziraphale before as well?” Another nod. Raphael pressed his hands together, two fingers touching. “You love them together. But you want to also love them separately.” He pulled his hands apart, fingers drifting away. 

“Love them separately?”

“One on one time,” Raphael continued to explain, seemingly amused by Gabriel’s confusion. “They get to spend time together without you, you want to spend alone time with each of them without the other.”

Gabriel thought back to their honeymoon-how the times he had alone with them had been both troubling but wonderful. Maybe Raphael was right.

But he didn’t have time for that. He could barely get a day a week away now, especially with Michael still having troubles. He wanted to spend every moment with both of them. He didn’t want to miss out. He told Raphael as much.

Raphael shrugged. “That’s something you have to figure out yourself.”

Gabriel did not want to figure it out himself. But then he remembered that he didn’t have to. Now that he knew what the problem was, he could wait until Aziraphale and Crowley got back from their trip and just ask them. 

“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “You didn’t have to talk to me, but you did. So thank you.”

“Wow,” Raphael whispered. “Marriage changed you.”

Gabriel smiled, because it did. He still felt some form of betrayal from Raphael’s abandonment. But he was getting better at handling things like that. (And the 5,000 years of not seeing him helped heal the wound as well). 

“It has,” he agreed. “And I’m glad for it.”

Raphael smiled back at him. “Feel free to drop by anytime,” he said. Quite the opposite of the last time Gabriel had been there. “Any conversation that doesn’t involve the ruin of the world or lack thereof is always welcome.”

Gabriel was glad, now, that he had not gone to Raphael as the others had. He had been worried about going to Aziraphale for explanations, but it was better this way. Now he had two husbands and, possibly, a friend. 

“You know,” he said, standing up. “You’re more than welcome to come to heaven. Or even out into Earth. Leave the garden once in a while.”

Raphael looked around at his little house and the greenery outside of it. “Yeah,” he mused. “Maybe.”

-

Gabriel had moved some things around to make sure he could be at the shop when Aziraphale and Crowley got home. He wanted to welcome them back and spend some time with them, since he couldn't before. He hadn’t exactly told them he would be there. And as the door opened, he panicked slightly, hoping that he wasn’t intruding.

“Hello, darling,” Aziraphale greeted, as if there was nothing strange about him waiting there for them. He came up to him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” Gabriel said, unsure now how to bring up what he wanted to discuss, and sort of wishing he hadn’t come at all. “How was your week?”

“It was good,” Aziraphale said, smiling. “We missed you.”

Gabriel wasn’t sure that was true, but he didn’t argue it. Crowley finally wandered up to them, wrapping his arms around Aziraphale and placing his chin on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You stickin’ around tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t have to,” Gabriel said, knowing that he was intruding. He shouldn’t have come. 

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale chided. “We want you here, of course.”

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. “I was just checking. You do have a tendency to run off.”

Gabriel nodded, his fears quelled. “Yes, I’d like to stay.”

Aziraphale smiled and took his hand, leading him and Crowley upstairs. They settled on the couch, falling into a comfortable routine with Crowley turning on the T.V. and laying himself down across their laps. Gabriel closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the moment. Aziraphale pressed against his side, leaning his head on Gabriel’s shoulder. He better say what he wanted to say before he got too comfortable.

“Our anniversary is coming up, too,” he said, keeping his eyes closed.

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said. “I suppose it is.”

“So what ya wanna do?” Crowley asked. He looked up at Gabriel with a smirk. “Another honeymoon perhaps?” 

Gabriel did like the idea of that. “I was wondering if perhaps we could also do separate ones. As well as together?”

Aziraphale lifted his head and looked at him. “How do you mean?”

“Like if you and I could do something alone,” Gabriel explained. “And me and Crowley. Sort of, our own anniversaries?”

“That’s right, angel,” Crowley said. He turned on his side, wrapping his arms around Gabriel’s waist and drawing his knees up so he could block Aziraphale. “He’s all mine now hahaha.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “Until he’s mine,” Aziraphale suggested, pushing gently at his legs. Crowley let them unfold, resting back on Aziraphale’s lap. “I think that’s a lovely idea, dear,” he told Gabriel.

Gabriel nodded. That went better than he anticipated. “And perhaps,” he continued, letting the good momentum carry him forward. “Perhaps we could also, occasionally, have separate time normally?”

He glanced between them, a little worried about their reactions, even though he wasn’t sure why he was. He was just always worried these days. Crowley got up on his elbows, a strange, sharp pressure against Gabriel’s legs. His head tilted. 

“I knew it,” he whispered. Gabriel held his breath. “You got a taste of the good lovin’ and you want more.”

Gabriel let out his breath in a huff as Aziraphale chuckled. “That’s exactly it,” Gabriel said. Crowley smiled.

“I’m sure we can work something out like that,” Aziraphale said, leaning himself back on Gabriel’s shoulder. 

“Not always,” Gabriel assured them. “Just sometimes. I still like being with you both at the same time.”

“Saves a lot of trouble,” Crowley agreed. 

He laid himself back down and grabbed Gabriel’s wrist. Gabriel ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair, resting his own head against Aziraphale’s. He loved his time with them like this, but he was really looking forward to his alone time with each of them too. He had loved them both separately once. And he was looking forward to reacquainting himself with those feelings again.

**Author's Note:**

> And now back to your regularly scheduled Hastur-arch


End file.
